Rhubarb

I haven't been posting for a number of reasons, the superficial of which being that I keep forgetting to take photos when I cook. The more serious reason is a little beast I sometimes call anxiety and other times depression, that, regardless of its name, coils like a sleeping cat on my chest, night and day. It makes me frantic and immobile all at once.

I don't like it very much.

But today I made a crumble I'm very, very proud of.

My lovely coworker has a garden and has generously been providing Spider with sacks of rhubarb lately, so there's been quite a lot of pie. or crumble really. I've been borrowing heavily from Orangette, making some variation of this crumble three times so far. Once with candied ginger and balsamic vinegar, once with strawberries, and tonight with white wine and vanilla bean. I actually set out to combine it with another of Molly's rhubarb recipes, and Spider seemed to like the result well enough.

Ingredients:

1 lb rhubarb, diced small
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup oats
1 1/2 cup sugar, separated. (Half can be brown sugar if you like.)
7 tbsp melted butter or canola oil
1 vanilla bean, split
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup white wine
1 tsp ground ginger

(Alternative spices/fruits: Orange zest, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, candied ginger, balsamic vinegar, strawberries, raspberries)

Combine 1 cup flour, oats, 3/4 cup sugar (brown if you're using it) salt and ground ginger in a bowl and mix. Pour in the butter or canola oil and mush together until crumbly and combined. Set in the fridge for 30 minutes or until everything else is done and you get impatient. Preheat oven to 375.

(SIDE NOTE: I bought this $4 bottle of white wine from Whole Foods because it was cheap. Cheap wine should not have a real cork. THIS IS WHY NO ONE LIKES YOU, WHOLE FOODS.)


Pour the wine into a small sauce pan over low-medium heat. Scrape the insides of the vanilla beans into the wine and toss the pods in for good measure. Simmer for a few minutes, stirring occasionally to infuse. Chop the rhubarb (I like to chop mine super small into 1/2-inch cubes or so.) Remove the pods from the wine carefully and set aside to garnish. Toss the rhubarb into the sauce pan, stirring to coat. Turn the heat up to high and stir a few more times. Remove from heat and add the other 1/4 cup of flour and 3/4 cup of sugar (I used closer to 1/2 cup but it could have stood a bit more sweetness if you're into that kind of thing.)

Pour into a glass baking dish or pie plate, and top with the oat and flour mixture, crumbling it as evenly as possible over the rhubarb. Garnish with the vanilla bean if you want. Bake for 35-45 minutes (I used too much wine in mine so I baked it for 45 minutes and then turned the broiler on for 3 minutes to brown the top.. just keep an eye on it after 30 minutes or so and use good judgement.)

Serve warm, with good ice cream or whipped cream or the rest of the bottle of wine.